Open source project Nagios is being forked into the Icinga project. The Netways firm, which specializes in open source IT management services and particularly the monitoring solution Nagios, will be managing the fork.

According to reports, many of the current plugin developers are already on board. Netways CEO Julian Hein sees add-on development mainly as a community project, while the Nagios core development lay single-handedly with Nagios chief developer Ethan Galstad, which led to bottlenecks. The community's attempt to remove this bottleneck from core development had run into a wall, compelling Netways to lead the charge by forking Nagios into a separate project. "After many years in which countless improvement attempts came to nothing, we see no other way to move Nagios along," Hein said in an interview with the German sister publication Linux-Magazin Online.

The new project will take the name Icinga. Hein assures that in many ways Icinga will continue compatibility with Nagios. He asserts that Icinga will use the same monitoring plugins and the add-ons will function in both projects. The Nagios portal will apply a similar compatibility strategy for the fork.

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Nagios Enterprises founder and Nagios maintainer Ethan Galstad has admitted to development bottlenecks in his project and recognizes that Nagios developers want a stronger participation in the Icinga fork project. Nevertheless, he's disappointed that Icinga didn't engage with him before they struck off on their own.